Considering volunteer patrol....school me.

[jmeb]

I'm considering a year of volunteer patrol at my home hill -- a smaller hill in the Front Range. Currently, I ski about 50-60 days per year. This year about a 50/50 break out between lift-served and backcountry.

The big question to me is am I going to regret the time commitment. Fall medical courses in the evening, then 24 days minimum over the course of the season (which thankfully is long at 6 months, so ~4 days per month.) One potential breaking point might be whether I can do some of those days on Fridays due to my work schedule. Patrolling probably means a bit less skiing with my better half and fewer days touring for sure.

Things that intrigue me about it:

- Medical training
- Camaraderie
- Internal view of mountain operations
- Helping people out
- Improving my skiing

What am I not thinking about? What do you wish you were told prior to signing up?

 

[CalG]

That the early morning drive up on a snow day can take years off your life. Same for the late evening drive home (after a beer in the locker room)

Some places, volley patrollers are assigned to less exciting tasks. First year, dues are paid. There are Beer Fines as you work on your skiing skills, navigate the mountain, and make radio calls.

Your list is sufficient. DO IT!

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Following with interest. When I live in Vermont full time I'd like to do this. I know I won't be able to do it in conjuction with teaching so I'll have to choose. I know the head patroller at Bromley so I plan to introduce myself one of these years. I really want to sweep at the end of the day. Something about this fascinates me. Not the only reason I want to do it but a motivator for sure.

 

[jmeb]

That the early morning drive up on a snow day can take years off your life. Same for the late evening drive home (after a beer in the locker room)

It does that anyways -- the reality of skiing weekends on I70. One positive is I may be able to take the employee bus or carpool far more often for 90% of my drive.

 

[James]

Improving skiing? Doubtful. At least not in the east. If you want to do that ski instruct.
Observations from family who've done it in the east:
Your day is 7:15 with boots on ready to go, to 4:45 getting off hill. 7-5 basically. (8-4 opening times)
You're the sherpa of the mountain.
Be sure your back is able to handle wrangling an 80 pound sled on the lift. This can have major implications as I've known someone that had to have back surgery because of it and could longer do sled work. They were able to continue after a year, no sled handling, but there's only so many of those non sled spots on the team.
You have lots of responsibility, prob not a whole lot of respect from the mountain frankly, which is appalling.

Be sure to check if your mt covers you for liability insurance. Some do not, you get it through the NSP and the Good Samaritan Law. When that change occurred, many volunteers I know bailed. Enough is enough.

Even given all that, I've had family do it for almost ten years till Vail came.

 

[Magi]

Improving skiing? Doubtful. At least not in the east. If you want to do that ski instruct.
Observations from family who've done it in the east:
Your day is 7:15 with boots on ready to go, to 4:45 getting off hill. 7-5 basically. (8-4 opening times)
You're the sherpa of the mountain.
Be sure your back is able to handle wrangling an 80 pound sled on the lift. This can have major implications as I've known someone to have to have back surgery and could longer do sled work. They were able to continue, but there's only so many of thise non sled spots.
You have lots of responsibility, prob not a whole lot of respect from the mountain frankly, which is appalling.

Be sure to check if your mt covers you for liability insurance. Some do not, you get it through the NSP and the Good Samaritan Law. When that change occurred, many volunteers I know bailed. Enough is enough.

Even given all that, I've had family do it for almost ten years till Vail came.

Personal conundrum: Why people volunteer to help a for profit corporations save on labor costs.

 

[CalG]

Personal conundrum: Why people volunteer to help a for profit corporations save on labor costs.

What are first tracks EVERY TIME IT SNOWS worth to you?

And I don't mean one of hundreds waiting for the rope to drop.

 

[James]

What are first tracks EVERY TIME IT SNOWS worth to you?

And I don't mean one of hundreds waiting for the rope to drop.

At Bromley one day a week? Not that much.
You're just as likely to have to deal with other garbage on such days also.

 

[jmeb]

Personal conundrum: Why people volunteer to help a for profit corporations save on labor costs.

This hasn't been lost on me. I do have mixed feeling about spending time volunteering for a for profit corporation when I could be volunteering that would do more good in the world.

At the same time, I'm not giving up 24 days of skiing to volunteer when my full time gig is in government human services where I make approx 75% of my market salary because I care about the mission.

Luckily the hill in question is one whose management I currently respect.

 

[CalG]

Luckily the hill in question is one whose management I currently respect.

Big PLUS, When you surrender your time for little compensation (if any) The time given should be rewarded with good feeling.

 

[SallyCat]

What sort of medical background do you/will you have? OEC?
The benefit of ski patrol in my view is that you will get a great deal of patient-assessment exposure, particularly on the trauma side, and that is invaluable if you plan to pursue any EMS or wilderness-medicine work.
I am a new EMT and work on my rural town's FAST squad (First Aid Stabilization Team). We mostly see medical issues, fewer traumas. I would love to patrol to broaden my experience, but I'm not a strong enough skier at the moment.
I get doing patrol for the free pass or first tracks and the camaraderie, but the medical training is a serious and ongoing commitment.

 

[CalG]

Just a note on continued med training.

Prior to HIPA, results and patient outcomes (x-rays and feed back from the hospitals) were a significant component to an individual patroller's ongoing learning.

With HIPA, Not so much. A loss on that front.

 

[jmeb]

What sort of medical background do you/will you have? OEC?

Yep OEC. No medical background except first aid / CPR years ago when I worked as a lifeguard. Getting that skill more dialed as I broaden my backcountry adventures is one positive to patrol for me.

 

[CalG]

Just an aside

I took the OEC training because I was coaching youth sports and had a few incidents where I felt ill informed and ill prepared.

OEC was not expensive, and available to me.

That was over twenty years ago. I no longer am part of the youth sports scene, but I use the OEC training A LOT! ;-)

 

[SallyCat]

Just a note on continued med training.

Prior to HIPA, results and patient outcomes (x-rays and feed back from the hospitals) were a significant component to an individual patroller's ongoing learning.

With HIPA, Not so much. A loss on that front.

First responders don't have a right to patient information once they have transferred care, and HIPPA rightly protects patient privacy. But that doesn't preclude debriefing, communicating with ambulance crews, and the use of anonymous case studies for ongoing learning. Which is to say that I don't think HIPPA diminishes education, it just changes the nature of it.

 

[Carolinacub]

I'm considering a year of volunteer patrol at my home hill -- a smaller hill in the Front Range. Currently, I ski about 50-60 days per year. This year about a 50/50 break out between lift-served and backcountry.

The big question to me is am I going to regret the time commitment. Fall medical courses in the evening, then 24 days minimum over the course of the season (which thankfully is long at 6 months, so ~4 days per month.) One potential breaking point might be whether I can do some of those days on Fridays due to my work schedule. Patrolling probably means a bit less skiing with my better half and fewer days touring for sure.

Things that intrigue me about it:

- Medical training
- Camaraderie
- Internal view of mountain operations
- Helping people out
- Improving my skiing

What am I not thinking about? What do you wish you were told prior to signing up?

If you're considering doing it for just a year you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Getting your legs under you as a patroller takes longer than that.
1) you go through OEC which is basically 60 hours of book/computer work and 60 hours of hands on.
2) you are now a candidate, this means you work with other patrollers and learn the ins and outs of the mountain, you'll also be working on sled training (which is a blast) and as part of that doing some skiing seminar stuff. I don't care how good you are it's going to make you better.

As far as the time commitment, I don't know a volunteer patrol out there that won't work with you to make everything work.
Yes you'll get less touring days but the days you are there you will be skiing and as for your significant other....well have them join the patrol also...we have lots of couples and lots of multigeneration patrollers.

The medical training is great to know. I know I'll be much more comfortable now if I come across an emergency situation outside of patrolling.
The camaraderie is probably the best thing about patrolling, you meet great people from all walks in life and all of you have a common interest. I've been doing it for 4 years now and my lawyer, my doctor, and my mechanic are all patrollers.I also ski some of our other hills in the area simply by making a phone call and asking them to hook me up.

Internal view of mountain operations: Yes you meet people that work in operations but the reality is you don't usually have a lot of interaction with them. They do their thing and you do yours. If you stay in the patrol for a while then you start getting more and more involved with them.

 

[John Webb]

Don't do as I did.
30 years ago I picked a small hill in Virginia (Skyline/Big Devil/ Rapahannock/ and other names) to patrol.
I passed all the on the hill training, all but one first aid test then the hill (bought by Camalback by then)
went bankrupt and closed for good. I was a certified candidate.

As ski patrollers tend to stick mostly to one hill, I quit myself.

 

[TrueNorth]

Personal conundrum: Why people volunteer to help a for profit corporations save on labor costs.

This is kind of what bothered me the most about volunteer patrolling. I probably spent more of my "patrolling" time doing unpaid on-hill maintenance work than directly helping people (although the time spent just skiing and hanging out in the patrol shack exceeded both of those).

The first aid training was good, but I didn't actually get much experience using it (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I probably responded to 2 or 3 real (but not serious) injuries over a whole season, plus many more cases of young kids having meltdowns on the hill.

Going in I thought I might be hanging out with some awesome skiers who would push me to step up my skiing game, but in fact the average skiing ability level was surprisingly low. I did however spend many days skiing in terrible conditions when I would have almost certainly stayed home otherwise.

First tracks on icy eastern groomers was not really a worthwhile benefit (but maybe a different story in CO)

In the end I realized that I preferred to have my weekends free to ski where I wanted, and not be committed to patrolling at the same small hill 2 out of every 3 weekends.

 

[CalG]

This is kind of what bothered me the most about volunteer patrolling. I probably spent more of my "patrolling" time doing unpaid on-hill maintenance work than directly helping people (although the time spent just skiing and hanging out in the patrol shack exceeded both of those).

The first aid training was good, but I didn't actually get much experience using it (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I probably responded to 2 or 3 real (but not serious) injuries over a whole season, plus many more cases of young kids having meltdowns on the hill.

Going in I thought I might be hanging out with some awesome skiers who would push me to step up my skiing game, but in fact the average skiing ability level was surprisingly low. I did however spend many days skiing in terrible conditions when I would have almost certainly stayed home otherwise.

First tracks on icy eastern groomers was not really a worthwhile benefit (but maybe a different story in CO)

In the end I realized that I preferred to have my weekends free to do what I wanted, and not be committed to patrolling at the same small hill 2 out of every 3 weekends.

Bigger bumps offer more engagement.

I've had the misadventure of responding to three serious incidents (ambulance or helicopter rides to further care) in ONE day.
Medi. training comes to play.

Our group is very inspiring. Plus we have some good skiers!

Lucky I suppose.

 

[raytseng]

Big PLUS, When you surrender your time for little compensation (if any) The time given should be rewarded with good feeling.

As far as non monetary compensation, you may get pro deals and also professional courtesies visiting other resorts. (Esp if you network with other patrolers, and someone local personally lines you up with a comp ticket when you visit them, versus just showing up).